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How does your professional discourse community use written…
How does your professional discourse community use written communication to transmit information to its members?
Report on your findings in a 2-pagepaper. Include in-text citations and a full References list at the end of your paper, in APAformat.
Identify your discourse community by selecting a field of work that you are already in or aspire to be a part of in the future (i.e. marketing, accounting, human resources).
Next, select a document that is used within your discourse community (i.e. marketing plan, financial report, handbook).
What is the purpose of this document? How do you know? What information does the author use to support his thesis?
Who is the intended audience? How do you know? What type of language is being used, or what references do they make which support your conclusion?
What is the context of this document? Where and when was it published? What is it responding to?
What is the ethical stance of this author? What ideologies inform their position?
What is the genre of the piece? How does it follow the conventions of its chosen genre? Who is the author?
Does the document adequately serve its purpose and address the audience? Why or why not?
What is the rhetorical situation?
What is the genre of the document? Swales (1990) defines the term “genre” as follows: A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes. … In addition to purpose, exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in terms of structure, style, content and intended audience. Who is the author?
What occasion gives rise to the need or opportunity for persuasion? What is the historical occasion that would give rise to the composition of this text? Who is the author/speaker?
How does he or she establish ethos (personal credibility)? Is there logos or pathos used? (Aristotle’s Triangle)
Does he/she come across as knowledgeable? fair? Does the speaker’s reputation convey a certain authority? What is his/her intention in speaking?
Who is the intended audience?
What values does the audience hold that the author or speaker is appealing? Who have been or might be secondary audiences? Does the author/speaker effectively fit his/her message to the circumstances, times, and audience? Can you identify the responses of historical or contemporary audiences? What does the nature of the communication reveal about the culture that produced it?
What kinds of values or customs would the people have that would produce this?
How do the allusions, historical references, or kinds of words used place this in a certain time and location?
What is the reason or purpose of the genre?
What is the structure of the communication; how is it arranged? What oral or literary genre is it following?
What figures of speech (schemes and tropes) are used? What kind of style and tone is used and for what purpose? How do form and content correspond?
What is the context of the message?
Does the form complement the content? What effect could the form have, and does this help or hinder the author’s intention?
Does the message/speech/text succeed in fulfilling the author’s or speaker’s intentions?
What are the circumstances surrounding this communication? This can be as individual as the shared history of two friends (private jokes, for example) or even on the cultural level. For someone born in the U.S., it is hard to escape a Western perspective.
For example, in the West, a thumbs-up means “OK” or “good job” but in some Middle Eastern countries, it is an insult. Language, too, does not always translate; Chevy makers tried to market the Nova in Mexico and it would not sell. Why? In Spanish, “no va” means “no go.”
What is the ethical stance of the message? The ethical stance what is the author’s stance is on my topic? Approving or disapproving? Neutral? What language or content supports this observation?
Can you summarize the main idea?
What are the principal lines of reasoning or kinds of arguments used? What topics of invention are employed? How does the author or speaker appeal to reason? to emotion? (Aristotle’s Triangle)
What is the form in which it is conveyed?
